It’s not that you don’t want to talk to them. You do want to talk
to them. You actually desire their approval; you’re just so, well,
insecure, that there is simply no way you can open yourself up to
someone’s unsolicited judgement (by being open to interaction
first). Your insecurity dictates that you won’t talk to them until
they’ve communicated clearly that they’ve already formed a positive
impression of you. And the result of all of this ‘pussyfooting’
around is that you now, at this bar, in the bathroom, consciously
arrive at this paradox where both your outsider behavior is
perpetuating itself into deeper and more prominent/noticeable
outsider behavior as well as your outsider behavior is indirectly
cueing others to treat you as if you were an outsider, which in
turn perpetuates your outsider behavior. And so this is how your
night goes.

Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they
have to offer.
Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s
own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.
Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist
from complex situations.
Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you
and thrive in groups.

"I looked at her face and looked so deeply that I felt I was behind
her eyes and all at once I found myself saying, as tears flowed,
'That's Me. That's Me!' And those simple words brought back many
thoughts that I had had before, about the fusion of our souls into
one higher-level entity, about the fact that at the core of both
our souls lay our identical hopes and dreams for our children,
about the notion that those hopes were not separate or distinct
hopes but were just one hope, one clear thing that defined us both,
that wielded us into a unit, the kind of unit I had but dimly
imagined before being married and having children. I realized that
though Carol had died, that core piece of her had not died at all,
but that it had lived on very determinedly in my brain."